Violence more likely in 'cultures of honor'

Violence is more likely in "cultures of honor," communities where
status, property and personal safety are protected by a stance of
vigilance toward threats and insults.

That is why homicide, and especially homicide in the context of
arguments, is far more common among whites in the South than among
whites in the North, according to psychologist Richard E. Nisbett.

Nisbett, who is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University
Professor of Psychology at the U-M and a research scientist at the
Institute for Social Research, delivered an invited address on
"Cultures of Honor: Economics, History, and the Tradition of
Violence," in May at the annual meeting of the American Psychological
Society.

"Surveys show that Southerners endorse attitudes toward the
appropriate occasions for violence that are similar to those
expressed by adherents of cultures of honor elsewhere in the world,"
says Nisbett, co-author with Dov Cohen of Culture of Honor: The
Psychology of Violence in the South (HarperCollins).

"Experiments show that when Southerners and Northerners are
insulted in the laboratory, Southerners display more anger, manifest
more physiological changes characteristic of stress and aggression,
and behave more aggressively in response to subsequent affronts.

"Field experiments show that Southern employers are more willing
to hire people who have killed in an honor-related crime than are
Northern employers, and that Southern college newspapers describe
honor-related killings in ways that are more sympathetic to the
killer."

There is reason to believe, Nisbett maintains, that the culture of
honor in the U.S. South, like many such cultures around the world, is
due initially to the region's herding economy of the past.

"People whose livelihood is based primarily on the keeping of
animals must be vigilant against the possibility of losing their
herds, hence they adopt a stance of willingness to be violent in the
face of threat or even a display of disrespect."